Interplay of nature and consciousness in your life

You are born out of these two — food and sex. It is so beautiful that in this country they connected both of these with the Divinity. Food is connected with God. In the Upanishads, it is said ‘Food is God’. When you consider food as God, you will not overeat. You don’t simply stuff food, but you eat food with so much honor. No festival in India goes without food. And when you go to temple the first thing they give is some prasad. This prasad is just a little bit of food that is given. Without prasad there is no pilgrimage and no festival. 

Similarly, sex is also connected with God. Otherwise, you keep sex separate and think this is my material life and think of God as different. But here in India, the ancient people, they linked sex to God, so that no aspect in you remains away from God. A basic instinct doesn’t remain away from God. So, when you honor sex and consider it as part of the Divinity, then your obsession disappears, lust disappears and sacredness dawns. And the basic instinct, from being an aggressive lust, gets transformed into a submissive love. This is the ancient thought.

There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit called atma rati, union with one’s being, oneself; rejoicing in one’s own self. There are two things, prakriti (nature) and purusha (consciousness). Nature and consciousness interplay all the time. Your body and soul — your body is female and your soul is male. So, their coupling is happening all the time, and seeing that union within oneself is samadhi.

That is why samadhi is considered to be a thousand times more joyful than the carnal instincts. Whatever joy sex gives, samadhi is a thousand times more joyful, because there is no effort, and there is no action there. It is only being and just being. Do not keep any corner of your existence away from divinity. The Divine should be interwoven into every aspect of your life and this is called Brahmacharya, which means moving with the infinity, uniting with the infinity.

So, in India, when you go to any temple anywhere you find both aspects — Shiva and Parvathi which symbolise prakrati and purusha, consciousness and matter. This is to first recognise the duality and then see the unity. They are not two, they are not different but they are two sides of the same coin. You are complete. What does this mean? You are both man and woman. Coming out of this label, ‘I am man’, ‘I am woman’ — getting out of your identity, this is Vedanta; the highest philosophy of the universe. 

Adi Shankara once said, “One who labels himself as something is a fool and one who labels himself as nothing is a bigger fool.” One who is nothing, does not talk, so just keep quiet. How can you say, ‘I am nothing’, when you are saying something?! There cannot be somebody there saying, ‘I am nothing.’

—The writer is the founder of Art of Living Foundation and can be reached www.artofliving.org